Moving the MFT zone

[Walt G]

Is there any way of moving the MFT zone closer to the top of a partition? I
am attempting to reserve a partition for GoBack's history file, which needs
about 4 Gb of contiguous space, but if I make a partition of, say, 5 or 6
Gb, Windows will put the MFT a third of the way in, reducing the amount of
continuous space available, necessitating the creation of a larger partition
than is necessary just to get the required amount of contiguous space.

 

[Chelsea]

Hello Walt,
If you have access to a commercial file defragmenter program like Perfect
Disk or Diskeeper they will perform off-line defragmentation. This is the
name given to defragmentation of those files that Windows cannot manipulate
while Windows is running. One of the things that happens is the MFT is moved
and the table defragmented. As far as I know you can't directly reserve
unoccupied space on a partition and therebye control the placement of the
MFT, but there is nothing to stop you creating a second page file of say 4GB
on the drive and then doing an off-line defrag run. After that completes and
the PC restarts remove the paging file. The paging file is therefore acting
as a temporary space marker where your GoBack history file will eventually
go. I havn't tried this but I can't think why it wouldn't work. You can get
a fully functional trial of PerfectDisk 7 at www.raxco.com. Hope it works
for you.

Chelsea

 

[Walt G]

Hello Chelsea

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. (I actually already have Perfect Disk). I
think your idea is very ingenious and I'm going to try it when I have the
time.

Walt